The Cubs still look incomplete at the start of a spring training with many moving parts

Incomplete is still a fair way to grade the Chicago Cubs on their offseason, even within the final hours before the first formal workout of the Craig Counsell era. When Cubs pitchers and catchers shuttle around the Sloan Park training complex Wednesday, a focus will be on who isn’t around the team in Arizona. Until Scott Boras closes deals for all of his top free-agent clients — Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery — there will be hopes for another Dexter Fowler moment.

Fowler showing up in Mesa and stunning his teammates — after he had reportedly agreed to a contract with the Baltimore Orioles — helped set the stage for the drama, energy and showmanship that defined the 2016 World Series team. Fowler’s all-around skills as a center fielder, switch-hitter and leadoff guy became even more apparent once the Cubs struggled to find his long-term replacement. That scarcity is part of how Bellinger quickly became a fan favorite at Wrigley Field and why the organization has such high hopes for Pete Crow-Armstrong.

But what really made that championship group go was an exceptionally reliable group of starting pitchers backed by a historically great defense. Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta, Kyle Hendricks, Jason Hammel and John Lackey each made between 29 and 32 starts, covering 945 innings during the regular season. As Jed Hoyer, the general manager of the 2016 team and the current president of baseball operations, said during a winter Q&A session at Cubs Convention: “No one in baseball has that anymore.”

“That feels like 100 years ago,” Hoyer said, estimating it will take closer to 25 or 30 pitchers to get through a successful season instead of the 13 players on the Opening Day pitching staff.

That reality means the Cubs will continue to monitor the pitching market and evaluate other ways to improve a roster that’s signaling around 81 wins according to the public projection systems. At the moment, the Cubs have an estimated luxury-tax payroll of less than $210 million for this year, according to RosterResource, leaving them roughly $27 million beneath Major League Baseball’s first threshold.

The rotation

While managing the Milwaukee Brewers, Counsell saw Josh Hader, Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes, Devin Williams and Freddy Peralta all make their major-league debuts. Counsell earned a reputation as a leader with great feel for how to run a pitching staff and keep players relatively fresh throughout the 162-game marathon. Burnes, the Cy Young Award winner recently traded to Baltimore, made 75 career starts for the Brewers with five or more days’ rest.

Justin Steele, Kyle Hendricks, Jameson Taillon and Shota Imanaga each have a certain level of status due to their contracts and/or accomplishments. Javier Assad, Hayden Wesneski and Drew Smyly have varying levels of experience and success as swingmen. Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown and Cade Horton represent the potential wave of young pitching talent that never showed up for the post-2016 Cubs. In theory, there should be few games this year when the Cubs look up at first pitch and feel like they have no chance.

Craig Breslow, who oversaw the step-by-step overhaul of the organization’s pitching department in recent years, left the Cubs to become the chief baseball officer for the Boston Red Sox. That work wasn’t a one-man show and certainly isn’t done yet. But the Cubs should benefit from Counsell’s ability to see the big picture. If the Cubs add another starter and/or a high-leverage reliever, this is a manager who can communicate with players, mix and match, and make the roster pieces fit together.

“Every manager wants the starter to pitch well for as long as he can,” Counsell said. “One of the hard parts is we’re making a lot of decisions based on trying to keep players healthy and productive for a full season. And we don’t know – there’s no data. It’s hard to get hard-and-fast numbers behind that. Sometimes when we’re taking a pitcher out, I might not say it, but it’s just time for him to be done with the game. He’s tired.

“It’s also about how he has to pitch in four more days and be good the next four days. And he also has to make 20 more starts for the season. Making sure that he can do that is more important than the next game. We have to trust the reliever will get those three outs, and that by keeping this guy healthy for the next 20 starts will lead to more Cubs wins.”

The bullpen

Volatility is the name of the game when it comes to bullpens. Just when the Cubs thought they had it down — seemingly finding some consistency in squeezing every bit of value from veteran relievers — 2023 proved it was an imperfect science.

Still, it was a productive season in that they found out how valuable Adbert Alzolay, Julian Merryweather and Mark Leiter Jr. could be in their respective roles. The addition of a pair of veteran arms in Hector Neris and Yency Almonte will be helpful, but it’s the Neris addition that really stands out. Neris is a consistent producer with experience in high-leverage moments both in the regular season and October.

Beyond that, he’ll provide the veteran presence the bullpen may have lacked last season. Neris is lauded for his leadership skills and his ability to connect with his teammates. If he can take youngsters like Daniel Palencia, Luke Little and others under his wing and show them how to thrive consistently at the highest level, his addition will be a big boost.

“By the end of spring training, we’ll probably have eight to nine players in our bullpen,” Counsell said at last month’s Cubs Convention. “To tell you that I will have figured out their roles for the season? I will not. Whatever I tell the media the last week of spring training about their roles, I’ll probably be wrong. I won’t get it right. That’s kind of the nature of bullpens. What I’m really hopeful and excited about with this group that will be in the bullpen mix is we’ve got a good number of players. I’m confident that there will be some players that take steps forward this year.”

Bullpens remain hard to predict. Perhaps this group would benefit from one more veteran addition. But between the arms the Cubs acquired, the ones who emerged last year and the young pitchers with potential, there’s enough here for this group to, at minimum, not be a weakness, and at best turn into a strength.

The lineup

It’s easy to look at this offense — a group that put up 819 runs last season, sixth-most in baseball — and see what’s missing right now: Bellinger. But Counsell already told us what the Cubs are doing: Solving for wins.

Last season, by position, the team’s offensive leaders (wRC+) were center field (132), right field (127) and left field (117). Next on that list? Most likely you wouldn’t have guessed third base with a 104 wRC+. So while many see the likely dip coming at center field if Bellinger isn’t re-signed, the best way for the Cubs to somehow match last year’s offensive production is for others across the lineup to step up.

Can Dansby Swanson improve upon the 104 wRC+ he posted last season and get closer to his 116 from 2022? Does Nico Hoerner take another step forward offensively? Can Michael Busch be the answer at first base? How about Miguel Amaya taking a leap at the plate in Year 2? Did Seiya Suzuki show what he’s truly capable of with those final two months of last season? A full season of Christopher Morel mostly handling DH would be huge for a team that had a weak 89 wRC+ from that spot last season. Those are just some of the ways the Cubs can hold serve on offense.

Ultimately, the best bet would be to bring back Bellinger, or perhaps sign Chapman to play third base. The youth movement has already started and there is a cluster of good prospects in the upper levels of the farm system. Bringing in one more veteran hitter who provides a modicum of certainty can help everyone feel a little more confident that the offense has a chance to repeat, or even top, a surprisingly strong 2023 campaign.

After a multiyear rebuild, the collapse at the end of last season and the stealth move to fire David Ross and hire Counsell, expecting more than just modest improvements is certainly reasonable.

(Top photo of Seiya Suzuki: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)